Montana

We are staying at a cabin, one cabin among a cluster of cabins that constellate around the bottom of a lake.  There is a little but raucous creek that drains out its south end, bubbling over small pink and green boulders before disappearing into the thickening forest.  Twilight, and tonight we have a fire.  It crackles. Embers rise like prayers.  They are carefully constructed to burn out before they get too high, before they get tangled in the net of the pine trees' outstretched branches.  These are outlined against the sapphire sky.  The fire exhales blue ribbons of smoke.  They dissipate like quiet souls.  Released.

It is night.  I can hear the creek, the wind, the smouldering fire muttering under its breath.  The breeze plays the tops of the trees like a harp, and it carries with it from across the lake the vague strains of a lilting baritone.  One voice, singing--real/recorded?--what seems to be an aria.  It reaches us in fits and starts, a broken stream of garbled Mozart...